Yahoo! Inc. has become the apple of every company’s eye. Microsoft, News Corp., AOL, Google, and Legg Mason are all interested in a deal with Yahoo!

AOL, subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX)
Time Warner’s AOL LLC is looking to repurchase some of Yahoo!’s shares above Microsoft’s offer of $31 per share and essentially AOL would be folded into Yahoo! The deal would make AOL valued at $10 billion and the dial-up access business wouldn’t be included.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and News Corporation (NYSE:NWS.A)
Microsoft and News Corp. are planning to launch a joint bid together to buy Yahoo! While this partnership is not official yet, a Wall Street Journal source confirms that discussions are serious. If acquired, this would combine some of the Internet’s hottest properties such as Live.com, MSN.com, Yahoo.com, and MySpace.com. Yahoo! confirmed 3 days ago that they are interested in an acquisition if the deal is higher than what Microsoft had to offer.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Yahoo! is launching a new advertising platform called AMP! but wants Google to be part of the action. Yahoo! is talking to Google about outsourcing ad search sales to them. This deal was made official yesterday in the form of a short-term test. Google would handle a limited percentage of Yahoo!’s web search queries. This test will be used to determine the feasibility of a longer term search-ad outsourcing agreement. It is in Google’s interest to work out this deal in the longer run to make Yahoo! less susceptible for a Microsoft acquisition.

Legg Mason Inc. (NYSE:LM)
Asset Management company, Legg Mason owns a large percentage of Yahoo! As a shareholder, it is in Legg Mason’s interest to capitalize as much as possible from any potential deal. CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer wrote a letter telling Yahoo! that if they do not respond, then he’ll work directly with the shareholders. Legg Mason is only ready to support Yahoo!’s independence if the bid remains to be as low as it is now.

What happens to Yahoo! is anyone’s guess. Nobody said that running the #1 Internet property was easy.

Information Source:
[1] Wall Street Journal: News Corp., AOL Pursue Yahoo Deals by Matthew Karnitschnig, Kevin J. Delaney, and Merissa Marr

“Competition in the marketplace generally protects consumers and I have no reason to believe that this won’t happen here,” stated Justice Department Antitrust Chief, Thomas Barnett.

Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (NASDAQ:SIRI) has received the approval it needs to purchase XM Satellite Radio (Public, NASDAQ:XMSR) for $4.59 billion. The Justice Department has given both companies antitrust clearance on the basis that consumers have choices. This includes audio on mobile phones and other personal digital music players. There is still one hurdle left: the FCC. Both companies have to get approval from the Federal Communications Commission.

CEO of Mel Karmazin made a promise to the government that if both companies were to combine, they would give consumers options such making certain channels available “a la carte.” And consumers would be able to block adult content and receive refunds for channels that they don’t want. This promise made by Karmazin may influence the FCC decision.

Sirius and XM Satellite radio charge roughly $13 per month to subscribe to their services. If both companies merge, the monthly price for their services is undisclosed.

Earlier this month, AOL made it clear that XM will not be power AIM Radio or Winamp starting on May 1st. This partnership break is related to AOL’s shift in advertising effort. AOL Radio will now be powered by CBS. CBS Radio will be taking over the advertising sales for AOL and will be splitting revenues.

Going forward, I think AOL Radio is going to suck. I was just comparing XM Radio’s channel listings with CBS Radio. XM stations are unique and have more interesting options compared to CBS. AOL wasn’t making much money from the XM Satellite Radio deal so it may have made sense for them to switch. I have a feeling that I may not be the only one that is going to stop listening to AOL Radio though.

Information Sources:
[1] Engadget: XM / Sirius merger approved! by Nilay Patel
[2] Washington Post: AOL, CBS Team Up For Radio, Advertising by Cecilia Kang

“Gizmoz has enjoyed widespread adoption by consumers, advertisers and media partners over the last year, and with a number of exciting new products, programs and partnerships underway, the company is poised for significant expansion in 2008,” stated Eyal Gever, CEO/Founder of Gizmoz. “As we move forward on a number of key initiatives, building cross platform synergies into our service is at the top of the list. To pursue our strategy, Asia will be key. This financing will play an important role in helping us develop unique offerings for this market.”

Today Gizmoz, a social network that allows users to make 3D faces sync with their voices has raised $6.5 million. This is Gizmoz second round of funding, led by DoCoMo Capital. Other investors of this round includes Benchmark Capital, ngi capital inc., and Columbia Capital.

Gizmoz plans on using this round of funding to introduce their services around Asia, starting in Japan.

“Japan represents a large and strategic market for the company. Gizmoz’s offerings come at an opportune time in the development of Japan’s extensive mobile ecosystem, and they should feed the strong desire of Japanese consumers to embrace innovative content enhanced by Gizmoz’s technology,” stated Nobuyuki Akimoto, President and CEO of DoCoMo Capital.

AIM users may have also noticed on the start page that Gizmoz has signed a deal with AOL. AOL Instant Messenger, the most used messaging system in the U.S. can now create AIM Gizmoz Expressions and connect it to their account. Gizmoz previously advertised for Taco Bell and has a Facebook Application called In Your Face. Gizmoz widgets can be embedded in Hi5, Bebo, Orkut, and MySpace pages as well.

Competitors include JibJab and Blabberize. Gizmoz was started in 2003 and has offices in Menlo Park, Calif. and Israel.

Facebook, the $15 billion social network is supposedly tinkering around with an instant messaging service within their platform.  If this isn’t a challenge to Google and AOL, I don’t know what is.  Google’s social network, Orkut has a feature to connect Google Talk within the social network as well.  And now that AOL owns Bebo, it won’t be long until AIM is integrated into that social network as well.

TechCrunch also pointed out that this will not be good for the instant messaging applications built around Facebook such as Social.IM.  Facebook already has a wall, a message system, a poking system, and thousands of applications to probe a reaction from your friends.  Will an instant messaging system make a huge impact?  I doubt it.

Yahoo! Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, and Google Talk are the oligopoly players in the messaging space.  Taking these players on is definitely a David and Goliath situation.  But if there’s anything I learned while writing about Web 2.0 companies is not to underestimate the underdog.  Perhaps Facebook has a steady slingshot.

AOL LLC may be looking to pick up another social networking-related company in the next few weeks.  Rumor sources are saying that AOL is now looking to pick up KickApps at a price roughly around $90 million.  Yesterday, AOL announced that they would be acquiring Bebo, a top social network, for $850 million.  AOL’s Vice President of Business Development and General Counsel, Ira Parker and KickApps Founder, Eric Alterman are speculated to be discussing the deal. 

KickApps is essentially a platform that allows users to build promotional tools through the use of widgets, social networks, message boards, etc.  Customers of KickApps include ABC, The CW, and VIBE.  Below is an overview of KickApps 3.0:

AOL is owned by Time Warner and is located in Virginia with offices all over the world.  KickApps is also in New York and started in 2005.

[Information Source: TechCrunch & AllThingsD]

“We got involved in an exciting and competitive investment in Bebo because we believed in the social networking space and the fact that Bebo was positioned for exponential growth,” stated Barry Maloney, a partner at Balderton.  “Our expectations for Bebo have been exceeded in a relatively short period of time, and today’s transaction with AOL has delivered an exceptional return on our original investment in 2006.”

The venture capital firm, Balderton Capital has sold off their shares of Bebo to AOL today.  The amount that they will earn from the deal is $140 million.  This is about 9 times the return on investment that they made into the social network 2 years ago.  Balderton plugged in $15 million to Bebo in May 2006.  Balderton also invested in MySQL, which sold to Sun Microsystems for $1 billion.

Balderton is based in London, England.  Balderton also invested in Betfair, Codemasters, Habbo Hotel, Setanta Sports.  Balderton used to be the European arm of Benchmark Capital.

AOL annouced today that they are acquiring Bebo, the third largest social network after Myspace and Facebook with 40 Million users.

“Bebo will be the cornerstone of our strategy to transform the online experience for advertisers, media companies and consumers.”

said Randy Falco, AOL’s chairman and chief executive, during a conference call today.
It’s interesting to note the price comparison to number one social network, Myspace, sold for only $580 million. AOL recently released AIM 2.0 which contains many social aspects built on top of their already popular instant messaging software. Seeing how they involve their current properties, AIM and ICQ, into Bebo will show wether AOL is seriously making a move back towards it’s social roots when AOL was one of the most widely used services of the dial up era.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2275828,00.asp

AOL LLC, a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. is planning on launching several new portals over the rest of the year.  AOL is fighting to stay head-to-head with Google, MSN, and Yahoo! for traffic.

“We want to be sure we are appealing to as many consumers as we can,” stated Bill Wilson, Executive VP of programming at AOL [source: Bloomberg].

Since AOL started in 1985, AOL has been continuously improving their services.  As they saw less consumers using them as an ISP, AOL made its AIM service for free in the late 90’s.  In the last year, AOL introduced Asylum, a lifestyle web site and Spinner, a music web site.  AOL also acquired Weblogs Inc. from Jason Calacanis which powers popular sites like TMZ.com.

AOL-owned websites received 109.4 million visitors in January 2008 according to the Bloomberg article, which puts them at 4th place behind Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft.

“The use of mobile services continues to increase at a steady rate and for any developer looking to build applications for this growing space, the AOL Open Mobile Platform couldn’t make it any easier,” stated Steve Murphy, Senior VP of AOL. “Our new open platform will provide developers with a new breed of tools, including source code, for creating robust mobile services and will encourage product innovation.”

Yesterday AOL announced the AOL Open Mobile Platform will be launched this summer.  The platform will be XML-based with a presentation layer that allows rapid new feature release.  Scripts for building applications around the platform will be compatible in Java, Linux, BREW, RIM, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.  Third party APIs and AOL’s own APIs for AIM, AOL Mail, AOL Video, MapQuest, Winamp, Userplane, and Truveo will work for developers using the platform.

Its interesting to see how AOL is not part of Google’s Open Handset Alliance considering Google owns 5% of AOL.  Further information is available at: http://dev.aol.com/openmobile.